The last three weeks have been fun, busy and challenging – Christmas with friends at Espiratu Santu, a 360 mile passage from the Baja peninsula to the mainland of Mexico, and some adventures in anchoring and at the boatyard.
Christmas in Paradise!
We met up with friends on another kidboat at Espiratu Santu for Christmas. We even participated in a parade of lights in La Paz harbour aboard their boat shouting “Feliz Navidad” at the top our lungs to the crowds lining the Malecon, who happily shouted and waved back. We feasted on delicious shared dinners and appetizers for three days in a picturesque bay on Isla Espiratu. Gavin even managed to get some kiting in on Christmas day, which was another dream of his checked off!
Passage from Baja to San Blas
It was our best yet. With a strong Northerly forecast, we decided to set off on the 360 mile passage across to the mainland. I was a bit concerned when three different boats to whom we mentioned our passage plans, politely asked us, “Have you seen the weather forecast?” Um, yes! We are actually planning to head into that wind. I asked Gavin more than once whether it was a good idea for us to set off and he responded with, “Jenn, it will be fiiiiiine.” He was right! We had 20 plus knots with organized swells and shifted between our reaching kite and our code zero sail with a single reefed main. We averaged over 8 knots, with steady 9’s and 10’s and reached a high of 12.2 knots, and importantly this was all comfortable. Slingshot came into her own. The organized waves made a difference for sure, and we finally had a good wind angle – just a bit higher than a broad reach – which allowed us to use our reaching sails. Good times!
Adventures in Anchoring at Isla Isabela
The guidebook says that achoring at Isla Isabela is challenging – with submerged rocks, a rocky, sandless bottom and relatively narrow space – but worth the effort to experience the wonderous Isla Isabela. The guidebook was right! And I think we were darn lucky to escape without any damage!
Of course, arriving at 3am in 25 knots on a pitch black, cloudy moonless night without accurate charts did not help. “Maybe we should heave to and wait until daylight to navigate this” we thought. But we were tired and then saw another mast light in the anchorage which gave us some confidence. We used our radar and our google earth image to landmark our position. We doused the main in the lee of the island and the swell and wind subsided. We motored slowly into the anchorage. It was very hard to see exactly where we were and ended up anchoring ahead of the other boat in the anchorage in 15 feet of water. Then enjoyed some much needed sleep. When we woke up, my immediate thought was wow, we were lucky to not hit anything! The anchorage was smaller than I think we thought the night before with rocks surrounding us, and an underwater rock somewhat close by. Hmmm, next time we will anchor further out when at night and just live with some swell!
Despite all of the anchoring drama (and there was still more to come!) we are so glad we stopped at this amazing island and would wholeheartedly recommend venturing here. The island is a bird sanctuary to the Magnificent Frigate Birds and has blue, masked and red footed Booby colonies also. As the sea birds do not often encounter humans (they nest at unpopulated offshore islands) they do not have fear of humans. We were amazed to see the birds at a close distance curiously eyeing us as the males puffed of their bright red throats to attract the ladies. Spectacular. We hiked across the island and saw a blue footed Booby, iguana and hundreds of Magnificent Frigate Birds.
The snorkeling was good too. Large parrot fish and clear water. And then we saw our anchor… The chain was fully wrapped around a giant boulder. No wonder we heard a loud noise of the chain all night. With a few backwards and forwards with Gavin in the water with his snorkel and me at the helm, we positioned the chain free of the boulder and were able to retrieve our anchor. Thank goodness!
Happy New Year!
We had a beautiful sail for the remaining 40 miles to San Blas and were rewarded with multiple humpback whale sightings, a yellow footed Booby visitor and caught two delicious ‘Golden Jacks’ in quick succession. Then we anchored in Mancheon Bay and caught the sunset as we enjoyed a new years dinner with delicious freshly caught fish. We toasted our friends from home with whom we’ve spent the past many New Years’ and watched the finale of Harry Potter. Happy New Year!
Tovara, San Blas and the Boatyard
We love San Blas. A quaint town with few gringo tourists, delicious banana bread and other baked goodies. I think it is the pesky ‘no see ums’ at dawn and dusk which keeps San Blas from becoming a similar built up ‘gringo tourist town’ as in neighbouring cities. Despite our best efforts we got our share of bites but we still enjoyed San Blas overall.
We successfully navigated the bar and pulled into Marina Fonateur in San Blas. Thankfully, the marina has a pool, a 50 tonne travel lift and a boatyard with capacity to haul our boat. We were so happy to have help from friendly workers at the yard. They helped us sand, paint, and polish Slingshot including the hull, topsides and stainless, as well as repaint our dodger roof with non-skid. Gavin and I first wet sanded the hull with 800 grit and the workers polished then waxed afterwards. It was a lot of work but we are pleased with the results!
We had a case of the boatyard blues as both kids came down with a stomach flu while we were on the hard and our 3 days of planned boatyard time stretched into 8 days. The pool kept us all sane (mostly) and the kids were troopers.
Our lovely contractor, Lalo, even brought live ducks for the kids as pets. Seriously! We thanked him profusely but declined his offer to bring them aboard as pets. Despite pleading from the kids, our subsequent research and longterm plan means that it would not be fair to the ducks to take them on right now! The kids had a fun three hours playing with them!
Overall, we are thrilled with having the work finished on Slingshot and we are looking forward to the next phase of our trip down to Bandaras Bay before we set off across the Pacific.
Hey Guys,
great catch-up reading while having a Thai breakfast, thinking we are lucky, we worked hard (still are), but we have the fruit of the labor at our hands. All I can say, i am very grateful. :-).
keep going
patrick
Hi Patrick, love your comments as always. We’ve been thinking of you and hope you are making headway with Thailand boat projects 🙂 We are hoping to anchor with you in a harbour at some point! XO J and family